Officials from Britain’s top three political parties held a series of meetings this weekend amid mounting economic pressure to form a government in the wake of last week’s indecisive elections.
And a key issue is the possible reform of Britain’s electoral system, which produced the nation’s first “hung Parliament” in 36 years in balloting conducted on Thursday.
Officials from the Conservative Party, which won the most seats in Thursday’s elections, met with their counterparts from the center-left Liberal Democrat Party, a longtime, third-place finisher in British elections.
“We intend to meet again over the next 24 hours,” William Hague, the Conservatives’ shadow foreign minister, said Sunday after a second round of talks with Liberal Democrat officials.
“A central part of any agreement that we make will be economic stability and a reduction of the budget deficit,” he told reporters in central London.
The economy, which played a large role in the campaign season, also looms large in the postelection uncertainty of a hung Parliament. Britain has been hit hard by the global recession, and its budget deficit is the largest of those in the 27-member European Union, officials said last week.
Political and financial observers will be watching how British currency and stocks fare in the markets on Monday.
“If the markets are jumpy Monday morning, that will increase pressure for a deal sooner rather than later,” James Forsyth, political editor of the Conservative-leaning Spectator magazine, told The Washington Times.
But the main stumbling block would likely be calls for reforming the electoral system — the Liberal Democrats’ signature issue, which is widely unpopular among Conservatives.
“If it was just the two party leaderships, this would be a lot easier,” said Mr. Forsyth, “But both sides have to get any deal through their parties.”
Reform proponents say the British system — which is winner-take-all in 650 constituency elections — discriminates against smaller parties. The Liberal Democrats, for example, won 23 percent of the vote last week, but secured only nine percent of the seats in Parliament. Conversely, the Conservatives, with just 36 percent of the vote, captured 49 percent of the seats.
Senior Conservative offical Liam Fox warned his leadership this weekend that they should not be “held to ransom” on electoral reform by the Liberal Democrats.
The center-right Conservatives, led by David Cameron, won 306 parliamentary seats in Thursday’s elections, making them the largest party, but still 20 seats short of the 326 needed to command an overall majority of the 650-seat House of Commons.
The social democratic Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, won 258 seats, its worst showing since before WWII.
The Liberal Democrats, despite a strong showing in pre-election opinion polls, won only 57 seats, with the remainder going to small regional parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — and one to the eco-socialist Green Party, their first ever representation in the British Parliament.
According to Mr. Forsyth, a possible compromise on electoral reform being discussed would be to establish a special commission to examine the question of reform and recommend options to be put before an electorate in a future referendum.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.